Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS Exams

23 June 2015

Tax benefits for e-payments will go a long way in curbing illegal cash

• The government has put out draft proposals on Monday to encourage electronic transactions in the country.

• This, going by the draft, will be done through incentivising both the consumer, who makes the payments and merchant, who accept it, by tax benefits if a certain portion of their total transactions do not involve exchange of cash.

• According to the draft paper, merchants will get tax benefits if they accept at least, say, 50 percent value of the transactions is through electronic means.

• Alternatively, 1-2 percent reduction in value added tax could be considered on all electronic transactions by the merchants, the paper says.

• Consumers will get income tax rebates if they pay a certain proportion of their bill electronically. The draft paper also recommends re-examining the authentication requirements for different classes of transactions based on the risk profile and safety requirements.

Modi's solar power dream gets a boost: SoftBank, Bharti, Foxconn team up for $20 bn venture

• Betting big on India's renewable energy sector, Japan's SoftBank Corp together with Sunil Mittal's Bharti Enterprises and Taiwanese mobile handset maker Foxconn will invest $20 billion to generate 20 gigawatt of solar power.

• SoftBank, which owns one of Japan's biggest mobile carriers and is the largest shareholder in Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba, will have majority control in the three-way joint venture company, SBG Cleantech, with Bharti and Foxconn as minority stakeholders.

• "Softbank will take lead and responsibility to make 20GW as a minimum commitment in solar space in India. In economic terms grossly $20 billion will be the scale of investment, probably it could be one of largest investment by a foreign company in India," Softbank Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son told reporters here.

• The government this month raised the solar power generation capacity addition target by five times to 100 gigawatts by 2022 under the National Solar Mission (NSM).

• The Japanese telecom and Internet major SoftBank Corp had in 2011 set up SB Energy Corp to develop clean energy projects following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.

• SoftBank, which has stakes in more than 1,000 companies the world over, has invested USD 1 billion in India in past nine months out of the USD 10 billion planned investment in Asia's third largest economy in 10 years.

SIDBI sets up Rs 1000 crore ‘Make in India’ fund

• Keeping in with the spirit of 'Make in India' drive of GOI, the Small Industries Development Bank of India SIDBI has set up a Rs 1000 crore 'Make in India' fund for MSMEs.

• "The objective is to make our MSMEs world class manufacturing hub. Under the fund, concessional finance will be provided to the identified MSME sectors", bank added.

• "In last 25 years, SIDBI has provided financial assistance of Rs 3.90 lakh crore which benefitted 346 lakh people in the MSME sector", he said.

• SIDBI plays an important role in microfinance sector of the country.

• So far, it has provided microcredit of Rs 9374 crore through MFIs. SIDBI has committed an amount of Rs162 crore equity support to 56 MFIs to strengthen their capital base for more credit to the microfinance sector.

• SIDBI's microfinance support has benefited around 332 lakh disadvantaged people, most of them being women, in terms of improved quality of life, improved social security, asset status and improvement in health and education parameters.

E-payments to earn tax breaks

• In an attempt to curb black money transactions, the government has introduced a draft proposal that has provisions for income tax benefits for consumers who make a certain proportion of their expenditures through electronic means.

• If accepted, the proposal could also penalise cash transactions.

• In his Budget speech, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said “one way to curb the flow of black money is to discourage transactions in cash.

• I therefore, propose to introduce soon several measures that will incentivise credit or debit card transactions and disincentivise cash transactions.”

Red sanders sleuths nab Chinese ‘ring leader’

• Carrying out a major operation in Bengaluru on Monday, red sanders sleuths of the Kadapa Police busted a Chinese-run warehouse in which some employees of the courier company DHL were found to be involved.

• Along with the two DHL employees – Saravannan and Rakesh – police captured a Chinese man, Zhang Yong Zhow (41), said to be a major ringleader in the red sanders smuggling network.

• The DHL employees were allegedly engaged by the Chinese ring to conceal red sanders pieces in reels of copper wiring so that they can be transported across national borders as electrical goods.

Only a few thousand pre-2005 notes left in circulation: RBI

• With less than 10 days to go before the deadline for removal from circulation of all currency notes issued before 2005, the Reserve Bank of India says there are only a small number of notes left in circulation.

• The previous deadline for the exchange of the old currency notes was January 1, but was later extended to June 30, 2015.

• More than a year ago, in a February 2014 answer to a Parliament question, the then Finance Minister P. Chidambaram had said that “In RBI’s view, the volume of the bank notes printed prior to 2005 today, still in circulation, is not significant enough to impact the general public in a large way.”

• According to the RBI, it is easy to distinguish the old notes from the new. The notes issued before 2005 do not have the year of issue printed on them while those printed after 2005 have the year on the reverse side of the note, at the bottom.

• In addition, the newer notes have a security thread that runs alternately through the currency note with Bharat (in Hindi) and RBI visible on the thread.

Germany frees Al-Jazeera journalist

• German authorities on Monday ordered the release of Al-Jazeera journalist Ahmed Mansour, two days after detaining him at the request of his native Egypt in a move that sparked outrage from rights groups.

• “We welcome this decision by the German prosecutor,” said Al-Jazeera spokesman Hareth Adlouni, adding that all charges had been dropped against 52-year-old Mansour, one of the best known TV journalists in the Arabic world.

• Berlin prosecutors in a short statement said they would not seek his extradition and had ordered Mansour’s release, citing both “legal aspects and possible political-diplomatic concerns,” without detailing them.

• Mansour, an Egyptian-British dual national, was controversially arrested on Saturday at the Berlin Tegel airport, where he had been due to fly to Doha. He had been sentenced last year by an Egyptian court in absentia to 15 years in prison on torture and other charges which he has rejected as “absurd.”

‘Implement committee report on capacity building in banks, non-bank institutions’

• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is seeking to structure a roadmap for extensive capacity building across bank and non-bank institutions in India.

• The central bank is in discussions with the Ministry of Finance, Government of India and the Indian Banks’ Association to make the recommendations of the Committee on Capacity Building in Banks and Non-bank Institutions operational, according to R. Gandhi, Deputy Governor of the RBI.

• The government actively led the process in the banking and securities industries before the regulators took on that role, he pointed out.

• The Committee on Capacity Building in Bank and Non-Bank Institutions was set up by the RBI in response to recommendations by the Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission (FSLRC), a body set up in 2011 to reform the institutional and legal structures of the financial sector.

• The Committee has envisaged capacity building in terms of HR management practices, underlining the strategic importance of HR in affecting the top and bottom lines of balance sheets, training methodologies and interventions, including requiring employees to pass certification programmes prior to being promoted, and system-wide measures which include creating a banking aptitude test and creating centres of leadership development. Mr. Gandhi said that consulting stakeholders would be crucial to this process.

• The Indian Banking Regulation Act (1949) required only 51 per cent of the board of a banking company to have specialist knowledge he said.

This Current Affairs is Part of Online Course of IBPS Exams.. Register Here

Click Here for Daily News Archive